In November
1938, the mill town of Halifax in the West Riding of Yorkshire suffered
a remarkable panic. A mysterious, almost supernatural figure who became
known as 'the Halifax Slasher' stalked the streets, stalking and
attacking his victims - mostly but not all women - with a razor before
melting away into the fog and shadows. The town all but shut for
business, rewards were offered, vigilante gangs roamed the streets, and
detectives from Scotland Yard were called in to help capture this
terror.

The detectives
soon came to a remarkable conclusion - there was no attacker. Nearly
all of the supposed victims admitted that their wounds were
self-inflicted. The case now ranks alongside the 'London Monster' of
1790 and the 'Mad Gasser of Botetort' as a classic example of how a
society can go briefly insane with fear of some phantom menace.

In late July
2002 and prompted by a visit from Mr Barry
Kavanagh, who is working on a film script about the Slasher, I
visited the key sites involved in the case. Most of the 'attacks' took
place in the streets around Lister Lane and Gibbet Street to the west
of the town centre, and many of the locations have changed relatively
little in the intervening 65 years.

The following
pages feature brief details of the key Slasher 'attacks' and other
incidents, with photographs of the sites as they appear today.
Information on the attacks is taken from Michael Goss' The Halifax
Slasher: An urban terror in the north of England, a Fortean
Times Occasional Paper published in April 1987 and the definitive
account of this strange case.

A final word of
advice to anyone wanting to visit these sites themselves - now as then,
the west central area of Halifax is a close-knit working-class
neighbourhood, where the locals can be suspicious of strangers. Be
respectful, and remember that these terraced streets are people's
homes.

For more on the
Slasher and other strange incidents from Halifax history, see this essay,
originally published in Strange
Attractor Journal.